Customer Reviews

The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama (Vintage Departures)

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In our media- and soundbite-driven age, every public figure runs the risk of becoming submerged in celebrity status and losing integrity. After all, as author Pico Iyer points out, we live in the Age of the Image (p. 41)--he could just have well said the "Age of Hype"--and media images, unlike the realities they pretend to represent, are one-dimensionally, simplistic. Know this is enough to make any reasonable person a bit suspicious of the buzz surrounding any celebrity, and this is especially true with religious celebrities. How genuinely spiritual can someone who's constantly in the public eye be?

I admit that at times I've asked this about the 14th Dalai Lama. But reading Pico Iyer's intriguing and informative book has set my mind at ease. If Iyer's account is at all accurate (and it should be; Iyer, whose father was a friend of the Dalai Lama's, has known him for many years), the Dalai Lama is a man with such a constant commitment to reality (p. 49) that there's little danger of him buying into the superstar the media insists on giving him. In keeping with his Buddhist tradition, the Dalai Lama has spent a lifetime trying to puncture illusion, deception, interpretive filters, and ideological beliefs--including his own. The Buddha once insisted that he didn't teach "knowledge," because it's too easy for people of knowledge to get trapped inside their beliefs (p. 157). The Dalai Lama lives by these words.

This immediately suggests a tension, which in fact is one of the central themes in Iyer's portrait of the public and personal life of the Dalai Lama. On the one hand, the Dalai Lama insists that the only truths there are must necessarily be universal, cross-cultural ones, and that putative truths which pertain only to specific cultures aren't truths at all (p. 15). This is a reflection in part of his acceptance of the doctrine of shunyata, the interconnectedness of all things, including beliefs (p. 146). Therefore, he looks constantly for the commonality across different cultures and belief systems, and urges others to do so as well.

On the other hand, though, the Dalai Lama is squarely in the Tibetan Buddhist ethos. Iyer points out, for example, that he's actually quite conservative textually. He believes that homosexuality is morally wrong, and he has strong things to say about the use of intoxicants and the permissibility of divorce, and he bases all of these perspectives on a close reading of Tibetan sacred texts. He operates, therefore, within a very specific, culturally-defined belief system.

Far from suggesting an inconsistency, this tension in the Dalai Lama's life is a happy one, and indeed serves as a model for the rest of us, who are after all each come from a specific cultural context. The Dalai Lama is able to bridge the universal and his own religious tradition by not taking himself too seriously. One of his most common expressions, Iyer notes, is "I don't know." He repudiates the title of "Living Buddha," which he claims is a mistranslation of the Tibetan (p. 51), and he tends to think of the institution of the Dalai Lama as a job rather than as prophetic (pp. 73, 131). He insists that his words, and the words of all people, especially those who have a reputation for holiness, should be scrutinized, analyzed, and discussed, and this is exactly the perspective he brings to his own tradition. He remains loyal to it, but he also knows that it doesn't exhaust the realm of possibility. In this regard, he's very much like the Trappist monk Thomas Merton, whose 1968 visit to the Dalai Lama is described by Iyer (pp. 146-50).

Humility, then, is what protects the Dalai Lama from stardom, keeps him focused on his commitment to reality, enables him to seek for universal truths while at the same time celebrating his own particular tradition, and gives him the ability--a rare talent in religious leaders--to laugh at himself. In capturing the contours of this humility, Iyer not only provides us with an insightful portrait of the Dalai Lama. He also gives us some guidelines for living well worth considering.

I heard an interview on NPR with Pico Iyer about this book. Iyer mentioned that the Dalai Lama was 72, which is my age as I write this. I was suddenly struck by the overwhelming thought that I had become this old with my spiritual values still unsettled.

By all measures, Pico Iyer is your basic everyday genius, world traveler and visionary writer. He has written eight books plus hundreds of essays, columns, articles and book reviews for Time, New York Times, National Geographic, Harpers, The Financial Times and more. He also happens to have known the Dalai Lama for over thirty years. I had held Pico Iyer on my "authors-to-read" list for too long to miss this opportunity.

Illustrated with many meetings and occasions over a period of decades, the author shows the enormous range of a seemingly simple man. The three sections of the book are titled: In Public, In Private, In Practice. Chapters are titled: The Conundrum, The Fairy Tale, The Icon, The Philosopher, The Mystery, The Monk, The Globalist, The Politician, The Future.

The fourteenth Dalai Lama is "built like a middle linebacker" but is nonviolent. He is deeply religious--he rises at 3:30am and meditates and prays for four hours--but advises others to find their own way. "A religious teacher who is telling people not to get confused or distracted by religion." He is considered a living god but insists over and over that he is "just a man."

He often says, "I don't know." At the end of a talk in Canada he says, "I will remain, to serve." He is famous for his laughter; he has a solid sense of humor but one suspects also he sees much silliness in the antics of those who ask him their profound questions or give him their worldly viewpoints.

The author succeeds in illuminating "one of the most visible figures on the planet," a man of wide talents and considerations, whose people revere him and hope to learn through his actions. Young Tibetans are impatient with his policies but are dumbstruck in his presence. He is a doctor of metaphysics but appears childlike to many. A living contradiction of superlatives.

I wholeheartedly recommend this book.

The colors of Tibet come alive, and Dharamsala rocks (quite hilariously) into clarity. Iyer brings us into the orbit and inner sanctum of the 14th Dalai Lama -- possibly the last in a long line of Dalai Lamas -- and creates a profoundly thoughtful, intelligent, skeptical, provocative and moving portrait of the most beloved spiritual leader of our time and also a breathtaking bird's eye view of what has become of Tibet and its people in the last 50 years.

The thing that's rare here is the perspective and intellectual honesty: Although he has known the Dalai Lama for thirty years, Iyer isn't a student, a follower, or even a Buddhist pracitioner. There are no overwrought feelings or needless demonstrations of somber respect, or attempts to please a big daddy figure. Iyer asks the hard questions -- has the Dalai Lama done enough for his people? -- and guides us perceptively through a rich assortment of encounters with the spiritual leader, both public and private, while skillfully revealing to us the wild projections we cast upon the smiley icon of Tibet.

I can't imagine a more deliciously highbrow yet gentle-hearted portrait of anybody, much less a human being who has come to play such a huge role in our imaginations but of whom we know (and expect) so little.

Pico Iyer's books are all so good -- I hope you've read The Lady and The Monk -- that I am reluctant to say this is his best work yet, but I feel it is.

Mr Iyer provides a tender, yet seemingly detached view of the Dalai Lama himself and the context in which he lives and has to try to balance his spiritual and political duties. Very insightful and without some of the spiritually breathless language that sometimes obscures accounts of the leader of the Tibetan people. Eminently readable!

Pico Iyer's new book subtitled "The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama" takes its title and theme from an essay by D. H. Lawrence about Walt Whitman and his poem, "The Song of the Open Road". Lawrence wrote "The great home of the Soul is the open road. Not heaven, not paradise, not `above'" The human person (or "soul" for Lawrence) "is a wayfarer down the open road" and democracy flowers "where soul meets soul in the open road." (Iyer, pp. 13-14)

Whitman's poetry, with its journeying, democratizing, spirituality, and sense of the private makes a fitting motto for Iyer's book. In describing the Dalai Lama and his journeys, Iyer also makes excellent use of appropriate short head notes from Thoreau, Michael Faraday, Emerson, Thomas Merton, Aldous Huxley, Marcel Proust, Etty Hillesum (Holocaust victim), and Beijing journalist Xinran Xue. These introductory quotations illuminate the story Iyer has to tell. I found especially illuminating the following Hasidic proverb which introduces the final section of Iyer's book, "In Practice" (p. 163).

" You must invent your own religion or else it will mean nothing to you. You must follow the religion of your fathers, or else you will lose it."

Pico Iyer is a journalist who writes regularly for the "New York Review of Books." He has known the Dalai Lama for over thirty years. Iyer's father, who had been born in Bombay and went on to study at Oxford, was five years older than the Dalai Lama. Iyer's father became friends with the Dalai Lama after the latter fled to India in 1959. Iyer is not a Buddhist, but he writes of the Dalai Lama and his teachings with great sympathy together with a commendable attempt at objectivity.

The book begins slowly and meanders from place-to-place. Iyer's portrait of the Dalai Lama emerges only gradually. Iyer portrays the multi-faceted characters of the Dalai Lama as spiritual leader for Tibetan Buddhism (viewed as a god by some within the Tibetan tradition), political leader and statesman for the Tibetan government in exile, religious seeker, Buddhist monk, and ordinary human being. The Dalai Lama's most appealing traits include his humility and self-effacing character under the glare of constant media attention usually accorded to entertainers and some politicians. Iyer is impressed with the Dalai Lama's ability to communicate at a simple level basic human and religious values to people of varying religious denominations or of no religion at all. The Dalai Lama has tried to encourage people to explore their own religious traditions rather than convert to Tibetan Buddhism. Yet besides the openness of his message, he is a person of great learning and practice within the Tibetan tradition, which he explores in depth in seminars and trainings beyond his public appearances.

Iyer's book is in three parts. The first part, "In Public" focuses on the celebrity the Dalai Lama has become in recent years and examines his public appearances worldwide with emphasis on visits to Japan and to Vancouver. The second part of the book, "The Philosopher", gives a more in-depth picture of the Dalai Lama and of Tibetan Buddhism. Iyer shows rituals, teachings, and schisms within this school of Buddhism that will be unfamiliar to those who know only the public face of the Dalai Lama. He describes well an encounter between the Dalai Lama and the American monk Thomas Merton just before Merton's untimely death, and he compares the spirituality of these two different traditions. Both the Dalai Lama and Merton had the goal of finding commonality among different religious paths.

The final part of the book "In Practice" offers a detailed look at Dhramasala, India, home of the Tibetan government in exile. Iyer discusses the difficulties in the Dalai Lama's path in returning the Tibetan people to their homeland under a rapprochement with China. The Tibetan people will face an uncertain future upon the death of the Dalai Lama, with the loss of the prestige and respect he has garnered on an individual level.

For Iyer, the Dalai Lama recognized early, as did his predecessor, the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, that Tibet erred in attempting to shut out modern life. The Dalai Lama has tried to learn himself the science and knowledge that the West has to offer. He has given, in turn, a perspective on spiritual growth and on humanism that people from many backgrounds and stages of life find inspiring. In Iyer's account the Dalai Lama is a possible guide to the open road that remains to be found by every person.

Robin Friedman

"The Open Road" is indeed about journeys - both physical and spiritual. The book is, of course, centered around the Dalai Lama and his public and private life, but it delves into other areas as well - the West's dreamlike vision of Tibet, life in India, dealings with China, various schools of Buddhism, politics, etc. Very clearly, it comes across that the Dalai Lama is at heart a realist, and much of this book addresses his strong desire to face the world straight-on and find real solutions to end war, pain, and suffering.

My only complaint about this book is that it does not flow well. There is no easy progression of going from point A to point B. It feels a little choppy. At times I was anxious to skip over paragraphs and move forward. I learned quickly, though, that this was a mistake. There is wisdom tucked away on every page. I learned to read the book slowly, stopping every few pages to let it all sink in. The author and his subject, the Dalai Lama, both have wonderful insights to share.

An enlightening read.

Iyer's reflections on the Dalai Lama's complicated situation, preaching idealism while attacked for his patience rather than expediency to assist the dire plight of his homeland's vanishing culture, animate this very thoughtful commentary. Through not a biography in any conventional sense, more a series of essays on the public, private, philosophical, and political facets of the monk elevated by history into diplomacy, Iyer examines the man fairly.

He interviews the Dalai Lama's skeptical brother, listens to those within the exile community who lament the advice of endurance rather than action, and surveys the predicament faced by the Tibetan government-in-exile as it witnesses from a distance one out of five native Tibetans killed or starved by the Chinese; one in ten having been jailed; thirteen monasteries not demolished or incinerated out of over six thousand before the Communist invasion.

Likewise, in the Dharmasala town set up as the Tibetan capital in Indian exile, Iyer sees a wealth of contradictions that depict the place as the ultimate global village. As you'd expect from his previous travel writing, Iyer's at his best in this section as he catalogues the clashes and contradictions of a place where the boys out of Tibet court European girls, long to get out of India to California, and then-- as Iyer a resident of that state wonders- what then? This restlessness pervades the Tibetans he meets, caught between devotion to the Dalai Lama and resignation to the collapse of their homeland.

He listens to harrowing tales by those who have fled, and about those who have returned only to be incarcerated in what Shanghai calls "New Tibet Reception Center." Since Iyer wrote this book, the recent revolts and their repression in Lhasa occurred must further deepen the despair felt by many Tibetans who have fled, or who have grown up abroad. This aura from the past year makes this account even more powerful. What I wish this book would have included, without compromising its integrity, is some guidance in the closing pages for how best for its readers, moved to act out of compassion, to practically and wisely help Tibet there and abroad.

For, as Iyer notes, combining the global with the local remains the burning core of the Tibetan predicament that the Dalai Lama raises. Gandhi and King helped their people as a small way of saving the world, Iyer agrees; "but in the Tibetan situation, again, the clock was less indulgent. If the Dalai Lama offered a new vision for the global century just dawning, he was essentially addressing a century in which Tibet as we knew it no longer existed." (225)

Yet, Iyer ponders if the Dalai Lama takes a wider, subtler range of advice for the rest of the world. "Of course, we can see the Chinese as enemies, but if we do so, we are saying, in effect, that we are going to spend all of our lives in the midst of enemy forces; the better situation is to change how we think of the situation, perhaps by seeing that our real enemies are our own habitual tendencies toward thinking in terms of enemies. We can always see the decisive effects of action; but what underlies action, in the way of viewpoint and motivation and feeling, is where the real change has to come." (226) Iyer's learned much from the Buddhists he's interviewed. No pat solutions, certainly.

As a Hindu Tamil whose father knew the Dalai Lama, and as one who has spent decades exploring the global identity he embodies, Iyer's ideally placed to examine this subject. He pinpoints the Dalai Lama's dilemma: he must leave Tibet to draw the rest of the world towards its heritage; in sharing its spiritual legacy, he must speak in a second language truisms that risk sounding childlike in their ethical simplicity and universal wisdom.

Meanwhile, as Iyer observes inescapably from the outside, the Dalai Lama also transmits the tantric, esoteric "science of the soul" gleaned from 1500 years of investigation within the Tibetan Buddhist schools. Iyer's glimpses of such controversies as the Shugden/ New Kadampa dispute whet the reader's appetite for more about this whole topic of the hidden complexities that the Dalai Lama's public, more anodyne pronouncements to the West necessarily must finesse or minimize.

I wish, in this case and others, that more documentation could have been provided. Although a fine reading list appends the book, often Iyer leaves his sources vague or anonymous. He's done his research, but pithy endnotes might have aided the reader wanting to follow up references too casually made in the text. For instance, he mentions a "Western traveler" who walked eighty-one days across Tibet without seeing another soul, but you have no idea who this was.

Still, with his range of experience in so many places, Iyer does keep the story moving with verve. Iyer also does not forget to guide the reader less versed in Buddhism or Tibet. He phrases much of what for the average Western or non-Buddhist reader might be unfamiliar in pithy terms. He sums up the Buddha as more precedent than Jesus was prophet. He notes how the Dalai Lama tends to stress the accessible, "New Testament" morality of Buddhism to ecumenical audiences instead of the "Old Testament" panoply of deities, magic, and rites known to the initiated monks. He defends such a watered-down sharing of compassion and kindness by the Dalai Lama as the essence of a practice anyone can attempt, and remember easily.

The author contrasts the path of Christians from Jesus' redemption to a linear heaven with the Buddhist progression from the dharma of the Buddha leading to an uncertain possibility of rebirth, and far less likely Nirvana. Iyer reminds us of a crucial difference. St Paul told believers to be "praying ceaselessly"-- stressing the deliverance from above; the Buddha counseled "striving ceaselessly" to work towards one's self-delivered transcendence.

The Dalai Lama's split between empowering practitioners with recondite doctrine, governing the exile and refugee communities (as even the most radical insist on no other leader), shuttling about the world talking to leaders, celebrities, seekers, and often starstruck romantics, and meditating four hours a day starting at 3:30 a.m. His lack of formality, frankness, and humor characterize a man many see as a god, but who himself appears to-- a bit wearily by now-- deflate such claims winningly. Yet, as Iyer witnesses, among newly arrived Tibetan refugees, in one powerful passage, the ancient aura remains as if otherworldly.

Iyer, long range among his dissidents and admirers and up close, gets to know the Dalai Lama over decades. While you sense always the respect between journalist and host, you also get the subtle message, as the book progresses over the decades that Iyer got to know the Dalai Lama, that Iyer begins to take in, cautiously yet ineradicably, the gist of the tolerance, long-range insight, and calm perspective that distinguish the Dalai Lama from the rushed and caustic world of the press among which Iyer has for many years earned his living. The example of the Dalai Lama appears, by the book's graceful end and within its extensive but heartfelt acknowledgments, to have rubbed off on its erudite, globetrotting reporter.

To a skeptic steeped in Western tradition, the Dalai Lama is a puzzling figure. A celebrity created and exploited by the media? A shrewd politician? A religious icon transcending strife and ambition?
How 'authentic' a spokesman is he for Buddhism, for Tibet?

The almost simultaneous visits of the Pope and the Dalai Lama in the U.S. invite comparison. The Pope, obviously, addresses himself primarily to Catholics of any nationality or ethnicity. His speeches are circumscribed by Catholic doctrine, although he attempts to reach out to other religious faiths.
The audience of the Dalai Lama, on the other hand, is meant to include everybody, regardless of religious affiliation. He does not try to convert people to Buddhism.

Pico Iyer, by birth and education a wanderer between East and West, is uniquely suited to shed some light on the problem. His close relationship with the Dalai Lama gives him easy access, his journalistic training allows him to keep a certain distance. He clears away some of the misconceptions: the Dalai Lama is not a mystic; not a "living deity". His word is not gospel - he encourages debate and criticism. He emphasizes selflessness and compassion, the interconnectedness of all human beings. But what foreigners are usually drawn to is the exotic, spiritual side of Tibetan Buddhism - the images of skull-headed creatures riding monsters and of strange, copulating deities.
Iyer attempts to reconcile these different aspects: the rational and the irrational, the daylight side and the nighttime side, as he puts it, of Tibetan Buddhism. And he gives us a taste of some of the divisions inside Buddhism, of competing factions (such as the followers of Shugden) and rival candidates put forward as incarnate lamas.

The Dalai Lama insists that he is a "simple monk", a student as well as a teacher. Meditations, prayer and reading take up most of his day. But his rigorous training in Tibetan philosophy does not serve him well when he is confronted with tourists eager for a spiritual adventure, or impatient youths seeking a fast and efficient way to enlightenment. Therefore his message has to be watered down to what often sounds like simple tenets you might find in a Boy Scout manual. You could even buy a T-shirt displaying purported sayings of the Dalai Lama....

Iyer's vivid description of Dharamsala, the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile, puts you right in the middle of the rather chaotic goings-on, and you understand that the vision of a "global village" is still far from reality. When the Dalai Lama admonishes the displaced Tibetans to "build a home within" he knows it's an idea that is hard to implement; and it is not made easier by the hippies and drifters crowding the scene.

There is growing tension between the Dalai Lama's message of non-violence and increasing restlessness among younger Tibetans who are calling for political action. As I write this, the Chinese government has received emissaries of the Dalai Lama, who advocates "meaningful autonomy" for Tibet. A glimmer of hope for the Tibetans?

"The image of the Open Road speaks for a perpetual becoming" writes Iyer. His own struggle for peace and clarity is reflected in these pages - an attempt, as he sees it, "to bring the Dalai Lama out of Tibet and Buddhism and into the larger community of ideas and thinkers".

this book is great. it was easy to read and very enjoyable. it is a good introduction to the d.l. and his place in the world. iyer's writing style is very nice and it flows beautifuly. he has tremendous wit, compassion and insight and is not afraid to look at difficult problems and paradoxes and make sense of them. he can look at both sides of an issue and is a real truth seeker. anyone interested in buddhism or the d.l. will enjoy this great book which was obviously a labor of love for iyer.

I read this book because it was chosen by my book club. Not sure if I would have picked it up without that "nudge." I have read a bunch of books on and by the Dalai Lama , have spent a few weeks in McLeod Ganj, and attended quite a few of his teachings in India and the U.S. Given all this previous experience, the book expectedly did not have too many new insights. However, I found it to be a good synthesis of traditional Buddhist thought, the current Tibet situation, and the man in between. As for the writing, I think Iyer has written much better stuff before this. As for the subject matter, the Dalai Lama is such an interesting person that it would be hard to write an uninteresting book about him. I would recommend it for those who are new to Buddhism and the Dalai Lama